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Alan Aitken

Bush battler taking the country road to a new chapter

There is an old saying that Melbourne Cups are won by the horse with the best story.

Sometimes it doesn't emerge until after the win, but more often a good story in the background has been dug out and held up for the world to see in the razzle dazzle and fanfare that takes over the Australian news pages in the days and weeks before.

Three years ago, it was jockey Damien Oliver on Media Puzzle. Days before the Cup, his older brother Jason, another jockey, died after a fall. It was touch and go whether Damien - whose father Ray had also died in a fall - would ride, let alone give the perfect display to win and blow a kiss skyward to Jason at the post.

One Cup winner gave a 15-year-old apprentice the first and only winner of his career. Another was won by a horse trained by pulling a milk cart seven mornings a week.

Dreams realised and dreams which came true, triumphant gambles and stunning breakthroughs. In 144 years, the Cup has woven itself a rich and thrilling tapestry to justify its place in Australian culture.

In 2005, it will again be won by the best story. It's a case of which one that might be.

Makybe Diva? Owned by Croatian-born self-made millionaire fisherman, Tony Santic, and would be the first horse to win three Cups. Or Railings' part-owner, Tony Pistikakis - a Greek, self-made millionaire shoe importer, who waited his life to win a Group One then didn't celebrate the Caulfield Cup and won't if he wins this Cup, either - his 17-year-old nephew, Ben, is ill with cancer in a Melbourne hospital.

Or is it the story which most typifies the Cup's roots - Leica Falcon.

Trained three hours' drive from Melbourne at Corowa - population 5,461. The town's previous claim to fame was as the site of a conference in 1893 that decided the states of Australia should form a single nation.

Trainer Richard Freyer, 57, has never had a Group horse though a well-respected winner of country cups and minor races for years, from a prominent Corowa racing family. He and his brother train 20 horses from stables built of local gum trees.

The owners of Leica Falcon are country folk, thrilled to be in the same race as the international owners and self-made millionaires. One, the local school headmistress, has taken a day off but she's done her homework - preparing a poem about her horse that she read on radio yesterday and may reprise to a wider audience today.

This is the Melbourne Cup - an unlikely handicap that gives a bush battler the same chance as the billionaires.

Melbourne Cup winners come from anywhere. And three months ago, Leica Falcon was as far from the Cup as horses get - a win just one step higher than a maiden at dusty Corowa, a race named in honour of Freyer's mother and father.

His Melbourne Cup odds with bookies then were 500-1.

Now the bush horse has a record of five wins from nine races and graduated to Group class a week before running the most extraordinary Melbourne Cup prep in recent history. Last into the Caulfield Cup straight, Leica Falcon had most of the field before him until he rattled off his last 200m in just over 11 seconds.

That finish had alerted Freyer he had something after Leica Falcon's first race in August, 2004. Then Freyer's thoughts were on what to tell the owners when his horse was 20 lengths behind the second-last runner in a country maiden field, but Leica Falcon zoomed home late in the race for fifth.

At Caulfield, Leica Falcon finished at Silent Witness pace at the end of 2,400m, and his greatest rival today may be inexperience - no horse has won a Cup with so few races under the belt.

This morning, Freyer will take the solo drive to Melbourne with Leica Falcon behind in a gnarled old float, and a bunch of bushies will hobnob it at The Cup. Not a bad yarn that.



Freyer's dazzling Leica can soar like a falcon